This article was downloaded by: [Harvard College]On: 12 April 2013, At: 07:14Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

City: analysis of urban trends, culture,theory, policy, actionPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccit20

Cities for people, not for profitNeil Brenner , Peter Marcuse & Margit MayerVersion of record first published: 02 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Neil Brenner , Peter Marcuse & Margit Mayer (2009): Cities for people, not forprofit, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 13:2-3, 176-184

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13604810903020548

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

CITY, VOL. 13, NOS. 2–3, JUNE–SEPTEMBER 2009

ISSN 1360-4813 print/ISSN 1470-3629 online/09/02-30176-09 © 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13604810903020548

Cities for people, not for profitIntroduction

Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse and Margit MayerTaylor and FrancisCCIT_A_402227.sgm10.1080/13604810903020548City: Analysis of Urban Trends1360-4813 (print)/1470-3629 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis132-3000000June-September 2009NeilBrennerneil.brenner@nyu.eduhe rapidly unfolding globaleconomic recession is dramaticallyintensifying the contradictions

around which urban social movementshave been rallying, suddenly validatingtheir claims regarding the unsustainabilityand destructiveness of neoliberal forms ofurbanization. Cities across Europe, fromLondon, Copenhagen, Paris and Rome toAthens, Reykjavik, Riga and Kiev, haveerupted in demonstrations, strikes andprotests, often accompanied by violence.Youthful activists are not alone in theiroutrage that public money is being doledout to the banks even as the destabilizationof economic life and the intensification ofgeneralized social insecurity continues. TheEconomist Intelligence Unit (2009) recentlyoffered the following observation:

‘A spate of incidents in recent months shows that the global economic downturn is already having political repercussions … There is growing concern about a possible global pandemic of unrest … Our central forecast includes a high risk of regime-threatening social unrest.’

Similarly, the new US director of nationalintelligence has presented the globaleconomic crisis as the biggest contempo-rary security threat, outpacing terrorism(Schwartz, 2009). Preparations to controland crush potential civil unrest are wellunderway (cf. Freier, 2008).

In light of these trends, it appearsincreasingly urgent to understand howdifferent types of cities across the worldsystem are being repositioned withinincreasingly volatile, financialized circuitsof capital accumulation. Equally important

is the question of how this crisis hasprovoked or constrained alternativevisions of urban life that point beyondcapitalism as a structuring principle ofpolitical–economic and spatial organiza-tion. Capitalist cities are not only sites forstrategies of capital accumulation; they arealso arenas in which the conflicts andcontradictions associated with historicallyand geographically specific accumulationstrategies are expressed and fought out. Assuch, capitalist cities have long served asspaces for envisioning, and indeed mobiliz-ing towards, alternatives to capitalismitself, its associated process of profit-drivenurbanization and its relentless commodifi-cation and re-commodification of urbanspaces.

It is this constellation of issues that wewish to emphasize with the title of thisspecial issue of CITY, ‘Cities for People,Not for Profit’. Through this formulation,we mean to underscore the urgent politi-cal priority of constructing cities thatcorrespond to human social needs ratherthan to the capitalist imperative of profit-making. The demand for ‘cities for people,not for profit’ has been articulated recur-rently throughout much of the history ofcapitalism. It was, for instance, expressedparadigmatically by Engels (1987 [1845])as he analyzed the miserable condition ofthe English working class in the dilapi-dated housing districts of 19th-centuryManchester. It was articulated in yetanother form by writers as diverse as JaneJacobs (1962) and Henri Lefebvre (1996[1968]) as they polemicized against thehomogenizing, destructive and anti-socialconsequences of postwar Fordist urban

T

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

BRENNER ET AL.: CITIES FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT 177

renewal projects. It has been explicitlypoliticized and, in some cases, partiallyinstitutionalized by municipal socialistmovements in diverse contexts andconjunctures during the course of the20th century (Boddy and Fudge, 1984;MacIntosh and Wainwright, 1987). Ofcourse, both negative and positive lessonscan also be drawn from the experience ofcities under really existing socialism, inwhich top-down, centralized state plan-ning replaced commodification as thestructuring principle of sociospatial orga-nization (see Flierl and Marcuse, thisissue). And finally, the limits of profit-based forms of urbanism have also beenemphasized in the contemporary geoeco-nomic context by critics of neoliberalmodels of urban development, with itshypercommodification of urban land andother basic social amenities (housing,transportation, utilities, public space) incities around the world (see, for instance,Harvey, 1989; Smith, 1996; Brenner andTheodore, 2003; Keil, this issue).

Most of the contributors to this issue ofCITY seek to extend reflection on this sameproblematic in the current moment, in whichthe worldwide financial crisis of 2008–2009continues to send shock-waves of instabilityand conflict throughout the global urbansystem. One of our goals in this collection isto contribute intellectual resources that maybe useful for those institutions, movementsand actors that likewise aim to roll back thecontemporary hypercommodification ofurban life, and on this basis, to promotealternative, radically democratic, socially justand sustainable forms of urbanism. Writingover 30 years ago, Harvey (1976, p. 314)succinctly characterized this challenge asfollows:

‘Patterns in the circulation of surplus value are changing but they have not altered the fact that cities […] are founded on the exploitation of the many by the few. An urbanism founded on exploitation is a legacy of history. A genuinely humanizing urbanism

has yet to be brought into being. It remains for revolutionary theory to chart the path from an urbanism based in exploitation to an urbanism appropriate for the human species. And it remains for revolutionary practice to accomplish such a transformation.’

Harvey’s political injunction remains asurgent as ever in the early 21st century. InHarvey’s view, a key task for critical or ‘revo-lutionary’ urban theory is to ‘chart the path’towards an alternative, post-capitalist form ofurbanization. How can this task be confrontedtoday, as a new wave of ‘accumulation bydispossession’ (Harvey, 2008) washes destruc-tively across the world economy?

The need for critical urban theory

Mapping the possible pathways of socialtransformation—in Harvey’s terms (1976,p. 314), ‘charting the path’—involves, firstand foremost, understanding the nature ofcontemporary patterns of urban restructur-ing, and then, on that basis, analyzing theirimplications for action. A key challenge forradical intellectuals and activists, therefore, isto decipher the origins and consequences ofthe contemporary global financial crisis andthe possibility for alternative, progressive,radical or revolutionary responses to it, atonce within, among and beyond cities. Suchunderstandings will have considerable impli-cations for the character, intensity, direction,duration and potential results of resistance.

The field of critical urban studies can, webelieve, make important contributions toongoing efforts to confront such questions.This intellectual field was consolidated in thelate 1960s and early 1970s through thepioneering interventions of radical scholarssuch as Henri Lefebvre (1996 [1968], 2003[1970]), Manuel Castells (1977 [1972]) andDavid Harvey (1976). Despite their theoreti-cal, methodological and political differences,these authors shared a common concern tounderstand the ways in which, under capital-ism, cities operate as strategic sites for

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

178 CITY VOL. 13, NOS. 2–3

commodification processes. Cities, theyargued, are major basing points for theproduction, circulation and consumption ofcommodities, and their evolving internalsociospatial organization, governancesystems and patterns of sociopolitical conflictmust be understood in relation to this role.These authors suggested, moreover, thatcapitalist cities are not only arenas in whichcommodification occurs; they are themselvesintensively commodified insofar as theirconstitutive sociospatial forms—from build-ings and the built environment to land-usesystems, networks of production andexchange, and metropolitan-wide infrastruc-tural arrangements—are sculpted and contin-ually reorganized in order to enhance theprofit-making capacities of capital.

Of course, profit-oriented strategies ofurban restructuring are intensely contestedamong dominant, subordinate and marginal-ized social forces; their outcomes are neverpredetermined through the logic of capital.Urban space under capitalism is thereforenever permanently fixed; it is continuallyshaped and reshaped through a relentlessclash of opposed social forces oriented,respectively, towards the exchange-value(profit-oriented) and use-value (everydaylife) dimensions of urban sociospatial config-urations (Harvey, 1976; Logan and Molotch,1987; Lefebvre, 1996 [1968]). Moreover,strategies to commodify urban space oftenfail dismally, producing devalorized, crisis-riven urban and regional landscapes in whichlabor and capital cannot be combinedproductively to satisfy social needs, and inwhich inherited sociospatial configurationsare severely destabilized, generally at thecost of considerable human suffering andmassive environmental degradation. And,even when such profit-making strategies doappear to open up new frontiers for surplus-value extraction, whether within, among orbeyond cities, these apparent ‘successes’ areinevitably precarious, temporary ones—overaccumulation, devalorization andsystemic crisis remain constant threats. Para-doxically, however, the conflicts, failures,

instabilities and crisis tendencies associatedwith capitalist urbanization have led not toits dissolution or transcendence, but to itscontinual reinvention through a dynamicprocess of ‘implosion–explosion’ (Lefebvre,2003) and ‘creative destruction’ (Harvey,1989). Consequently, despite its destructive,destabilizing social and environmentalconsequences, capital’s relentless drive toenhance profitability has long played, andcontinues to play, a powerful role in produc-ing and transforming urban sociospatialconfigurations.1

These analytical and political startingpoints have, since the 1970s, facilitated anextraordinary outpouring of concrete, criti-cally oriented research on the variousdimensions and consequences of capitalistforms of urbanization—including patternsof industrial agglomeration and inter-firmrelations; the evolution of urban labormarkets; the political economy of real estateand urban property relations; problems ofsocial reproduction, including housing,transportation, education and infrastructureinvestment; the evolution of class strugglesand other social conflicts in the spheres ofproduction, reproduction and urban gover-nance; the role of state institutions, at vari-ous spatial scales, in mediating processesof urban restructuring; the reorganization ofurban governance regimes; the evolution ofurbanized socio-natures; and the consolida-tion of diverse forms of urban social mobili-zation, conflict and struggle (for overviews,see Dear and Scott, 1980; Soja, 2000;Heynen et al., 2006). Such analyses in turncontributed to the elaboration of severaldistinct strands of critical urban researchthat have inspired generations of intellectualand political engagement with urban ques-tions. These research strands include, at vari-ous levels of abstraction: (a) periodizationsof capitalist urban development that havelinked (world-scale) regimes of capital accu-mulation to changing (national and local)configurations of urban space; (b) compara-tive approaches to urban studies that haveexplored the place- and territory-specific

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

BRENNER ET AL.: CITIES FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT 179

forms of urban sociospatial organizationthat have crystallized within each of thelatter configurations; and (c) conjuncturalanalyses that attempt to decipher ongoing,site-specific processes of urban restructur-ing, their sources within the underlyingcrisis tendencies of world capitalism, theirramifications for the future trajectory ofurban development, and the possibility ofsubjecting the latter to some form of popu-lar-democratic control.

This is not, however, to suggest that criti-cal urban studies represents a homogeneousresearch field based on a rigidly orthodox orparadigmatic foundation. On the contrary,the development of critical approaches to thestudy of capitalist urbanization has beenfraught with wide-ranging disagreementsabout any number of core theoretical, meth-odological and political issues (for overviews,see Saunders, 1984; Katznelson, 1993; Soja,2000). Even though their form, content andstakes have evolved considerably in relationto the continued forward-movement ofworldwide capitalist urbanization, suchcontroversies remain as intense in the late2000s as they were in the early 1970s.

Nonetheless, against the background ofthe last four decades of vibrant theorizing,research, debate and disagreement on urbanquestions under capitalism, we believe it isplausible to speak of a broadly coherent,‘critical’ branch of urban studies. This criti-cal branch can be usefully counterposed to‘mainstream’ or ‘traditional’ approaches tourban questions (for further elaboration onthe specificity of ‘critical’ urban theory, seethe contributions to this issue by Marcuse,Brenner, Goonewardena and Rankin,respectively). In the most general terms, crit-ical approaches to urban studies areconcerned: (a) to analyze the systemic, yethistorically specific, intersections betweencapitalism and urbanization processes; (b) toexamine the changing balance of socialforces, power relations, sociospatial inequal-ities and political–institutional arrangementsthat shape, and are in turn shaped by, theevolution of capitalist urbanization; (c) to

expose the marginalizations, exclusions andinjustices (whether of class, ethnicity, ‘race’,gender, sexuality, nationality or otherwise)that are inscribed and naturalized withinexisting urban configurations; (d) to deci-pher the contradictions, crisis tendencies andlines of potential or actual conflict withincontemporary cities, and on this basis, (e) todemarcate and to politicize the strategicallyessential possibilities for more progressive,socially just, emancipatory and sustainableformations of urban life.

Cities in crisis: theory … and practice

This special issue of CITY is concerned witheach of these issues, and in this sense, itrepresents a sustained collective engagementwith the project of critical urban studies.Earlier versions of these contributions werepresented in November 2008, at a conferenceheld at the Center for Metropolitan Studies,Berlin, in honor of Peter Marcuse’s birth80 years earlier in the same city. The confer-ence was framed broadly around some of thekey issues to which Marcuse has devoted hisacademic career as a critical urbanist andplanner—the transformation of cities andurban space under contemporary capitalism;the role of the state and urban planning inmediating those transformations; the politicsof urban sociospatial exclusion and polariza-tion along class and ethnoracial lines; and thepossibilities for progressive or radical inter-ventions and mobilizations to produce moresocially just, radically democratic andsustainable urban formations. These themesare well represented in the contributions thatfollow, which span from reflections on thenature of critical urban theory and theconcept of the right to the city (Marcuse,Brenner, Goonewardena), through analysesof historical alternatives to the commodifica-tion of urban space (Flierl and Marcuse,Steinert), discussions of how best to interpretthe contemporary moment of worldwideurban restructuring (Keil), critical engage-ments with established bodies of knowledge

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

180 CITY VOL. 13, NOS. 2–3

on urban questions (Rankin, Slater, Berntand Holm), concrete investigations of vari-ous contemporary patterns of urbansociospatial restructuring and exclusion(Steinert, Keil, Yiftachel, Uitermark), andcritical accounts of contemporary mobiliza-tions that contest currently dominantpatterns of urbanism (Scharenberg andBader, Boudreau, Mayer).

All of the contributions to this specialissue insist on the centrality of commodifi-cation as an intellectual and political refer-ence point for any critical account of thecontemporary urban condition. But theyapproach this problematic through varioustheoretical and methodological lenses, andthey assess its implications for concreteurban configurations from diverse thematicstandpoints. The majority of the contribu-tions focus on patterns of urban restructur-ing and their associated contradictionsduring the last decade, with particular refer-ence to the hypercommodified urban spacesof western Europe and North America, butalso, in some contributions, with referenceto urbanization processes in the MiddleEast (Yiftachel) or in the global South(Rankin).

Several contributions engage with Lefeb-vre’s classic concept of the ‘right to the city’(1996 [1968]), which has recently been redis-covered by radical academics and activistsalike (Marcuse, Mayer). This slogan representsone important rallying cry and basis for trans-formative political mobilization in manycontemporary cities, and it also resonates withearlier calls to create ‘cities for citizens’through the reinvigoration of participatoryurban civil societies (Douglass and Friedmann,1998). However, as Mayer points out, thispotentially radical political slogan, much likethat of ‘social capital’, is also being usedideologically by state institutions, which haveco-opted it into a basis for legitimating exist-ing, only weakly participatory forms of urbangovernance, or for exaggerating the systemicimplications of newly introduced forms ofcitizen participation in municipal affairs (seealso Mayer, 2003). Lefebvre (2009 [1966])

himself grappled with an analogous problemin the 1960s and 1970s, when the Eurocom-munist concept of autogestion—literally, ‘self-management’, but perhaps best translated as‘grassroots democracy’—was being perva-sively misappropriated by various interests tolegitimate new forms of state bureaucraticplanning. In contrast to such tendencies,Lefebvre insisted that ‘limiting the world ofcommodities’ was essential to any project ofradical democracy, urban or otherwise, for thiswould ‘give content to the projects of demo-cratic planning, prioritizing the social needsthat are formulated, controlled and managedby those who have a stake in them’ (Lefebvre,2009 [1966], p. 148). While several contribu-tions explore the challenges and dilemmasassociated with such an urban politics ofgrassroots participation (Marcuse, Rankin,Scharenberg and Bader), others advocate itsconstruction, extension or reinvention in thewake of restructuring processes that areintensifying the marginalization, exclusion,displacement, disempowerment or oppressionof urban inhabitants (see, for instance,Yiftachel, Steinert, Slater, Uitermark; cf. alsoPurcell, 2008).

Clearly, since the Fordist–Keynesianperiod, urban social movements have hadtheir ups and downs. On occasion, they havesucceeded in producing major changes, but inother cases their radical promise has beenaborted, co-opted or ‘mainstreamed’. Ofcourse, as the above remarks indicate, not allsuch movements actually sought systemicchange.2 But from the perspective of the fieldof critical urban studies, one may venture thefollowing conjecture regarding the currentsituation: the transformative potential ofsocial movement mobilizations will dependon two basic factors—the objective position,power and strategies of those currently estab-lished in positions of domination; and theobjective position, power and strategies ofthose who are mobilizing in opposition toestablished forms of urbanism.

As indicated above, the objective positionin which both elements currently find them-selves is crisis. Initially, that crisis appears to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

BRENNER ET AL.: CITIES FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT 181

be rooted in the economic structure, but ithas also been extended to forms of gover-nance, regulation and political consciousness.The strategy of those in power is unfortu-nately quite clear, and can be summarizedunder the rubric of neoliberalism and its vari-ous permutations. This forms the backdropfor many of the contributions to this specialissue, which examine various ways in whichthe social power relations of capitalism—along with imperialism, colonialism, racismand other modalities of social disempower-ment—are inscribed within urban sociospa-tial landscapes around the world (Keil,Rankin, Yiftachel, Steinert, Slater, Bernt andHolm, Uitermark). But what about theforces of resistance to domination, thosesuffering due to the current crisis and,indeed, the longer-term relations of exploita-tion of which the current situation is a conse-quence and part? What is their future, andwhat kind of change, if any, will theyproduce?

The nature of the groups that are adverselyaffected by existing arrangements andcontemporary restructuring processes is like-wise addressed in several papers below.For instance, Marcuse distinguishes betweenthe deprived—those who are immediatelyexploited, unemployed, impoverished,discriminated against in jobs and education,in ill health and uncared for, or incarcerated;and the discontented—those who are disre-spected, treated unequally because of sexual,political or religious orientation, censored inspeech, writing, research or artistic expres-sion, forced into alienating jobs, or otherwiseconstrained in their capacity to explore thepossibilities of life. Members of both of thesepartially overlapping groups have consider-able cause to oppose the existing system ofcapitalism and contemporary forms of urban-ism. But they are a heterogeneous group, andtheir common interest is not always obvious,nor is concerted action easy. The events of1968 are mentioned recurrently in several ofthe contributions here as manifesting, simul-taneously, the transformative potential andthe endemic difficulty of united, collective

action across diverse constituencies. Thepossibility for such action is furtherconstrained by the potent force of the corpo-rate media, the daily, routinized language ofpolitics and the perceived need to deal witheveryday crises before long-term, systemicissues can be addressed. And, above all,transformative action is constrained bythe propaganda of market fundamentalism,the induced appeal of mass consumerism, thetechnically instrumentalized educationalsystem, the oppressive weight of bureaucracyand, through it all, the overwhelming forceof dominant ideologies of exclusion andsupremacy (for instance, nationalism,Eurocentrism, Orientalism, heteronormativ-ity, speciesism and so forth).

Several different approaches to resistanceand change are, however, possible. The over-whelming reaction to the collapse of theprevailing private market financial system,whose trivial public regulation is itself in thehands of the dominant institutions andcorporations of the private world, is popularoutrage. That outrage could well be directedagainst the system as a whole; it could take aradical turn, in the spirit of Lefebvre. Theargument could be made that the presentcrisis exposes the vices of the capitalistsystem as a whole, and that the realization ofa genuine right to the city requires the aboli-tion of the rule of private finance, and thuswith it the rule of private capital, over theurban economy, and indeed, that of theworld economy as a whole. That would be aradical response, one oriented preciselytowards the construction of an ‘urbanismappropriate for the human species’, as envi-sioned by Harvey (1976, p. 314).3

A liberal-progressive or reformist response,on the other hand, would focus on individualand ‘excessive’ greed, whether of bankers orfinanciers or politicians, as the villains thathave produced the current crisis. Such aresponse would, accordingly, focus on regu-lating the activities of such power-brokersmore thoroughly than existing regulationspermit. It would direct outrage not at thesystem as a whole, but at the bonuses which

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

182 CITY VOL. 13, NOS. 2–3

executives get from it, the Ponzi schemeswhich some have perpetrated or the abuses ofpolitical power that have likewise been impli-cated in the current crisis. To the extent thatthis response thematizes nationalization at all,it sees this as a step towards restoring thebanks to ‘health’, that is, renewed profitabil-ity, and then returning them to their private,corporate owners, perhaps now shelteredfrom excessive ‘risk’ through ‘better’ regula-tion. Thus the outrage is eviscerated, and theright to the city shrivels to a right to unem-ployment benefits and public investment inurban infrastructure (needed anyway to keepbusinesses ‘competitive’), with massive bail-outs for banks being offset by some minimalprotections for small and middle-classborrowers of ‘viable’ mortgages.

Will contemporary urban social move-ments be thus co-opted, as they were duringthe austerity, roll-out phase of neoliberalrestructuring in the 1980s? Will they becontent with reforms that merely reboot thesystem, or will they attempt to address theproblem of systemic change as did the mili-tant student and labor movements of 1968?As of this writing (May 2009), bothincreased militancy, as in the squatting offoreclosed homes, and co-optation, as in theendless debates about mortgage regulation,appear possible. Prediction is hazardous, notleast because urban space continues to servesimultaneously as the arena, the medium andthe stake of ongoing struggles regarding thefuture of capitalism. It is, in Harvey’s formu-lation (2008, p. 39), the ‘point of collision’between the mobilizations of the deprived,the discontented and the dispossessed, on theone side, and on the other, ruling class strate-gies to instrumentalize, control and colonizesocial and natural resources, including theright to the city itself, for the benefit of thefew. As such struggles over the present andfuture shape of our cities intensify, we hopethat this issue will contribute to clarifyingwhat needs to be understood and what needsto be done in order to forge a radical alterna-tive to the dismal, destructive status quo ofworldwide capitalist urbanization. The

slogan, ‘Cities for people, not for profit’, isthus intended to set into stark relief what weview as a central political objective for ongo-ing efforts, at once theoretical and practical,to address the crises of our time.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the editorial committeeof CITY for supporting the collective workembodied in this issue. CITY is an idealforum for discussion of the problematic of‘cities for people, not for profit’, due to itslong-standing commitment to bringingtogether, in readable form, theoreticalreflections on the contemporary urbancondition, analyses of practical experiencesin contemporary urban conflicts, andperhaps most crucially, explorations of theirnecessary, if constantly evolving, interrela-tionships. We are particularly grateful toBob Catterall, editor of CITY, for hiscomradely support, intellectual engage-ment, encouragement and patience as wehave worked to complete this project underpressing deadlines. We would also like toconvey our thanks to Paul Chatterton forhis expert and prompt assistance in variouseditorial and production-related matters; toDan Swanton and Martin Woessner fortheir helpful comments on a selection of thetexts; and also to Carolyn Haynes, CITY’sresourceful and intellectually engagedproduction editor, for her assistance andexpertise. Earlier versions of the papersincluded here were originally presented atan international conference funded prima-rily by the German Research Association(DFG) and held in November 2008 at theCenter for Metropolitan Studies (CMS),Berlin. The CMS and the DFG also gener-ously supported a co-teaching arrangementfor a graduate seminar convened jointly bythe three editors of this issue in the Depart-ment of Sociology, New York Universityand the Graduate School of Architectureand Urban Planning, Columbia Universityin fall 2006. Many of the ideas behind this

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

BRENNER ET AL.: CITIES FOR PEOPLE, NOT FOR PROFIT 183

journal issue were forged through ourdiscussions in that seminar; we thank ourstudents for the seriousness of their engage-ment with our evolving ideas. We areextremely grateful to the DFG for support-ing our intellectual collaboration and forcontributing essential funding towards theBerlin conference. We owe a special debt ofgratitude to Ms Katja Sussner of the BerlinCMS for her invaluable work in organizingthe conference. Without her expert assis-tance and organizational support, thisproject would have been an impossibleundertaking. Finally, we would like toconvey our thanks to the Rosa LuxemburgStiftung for contributing crucial additionalfunding towards the Berlin conference.

Notes

1 1 Exploration of the nexus between cities and commodification had, of course, already been initiated in the mid-19th century by Engels in his classic study of industrial Manchester (1987 [1845]). However, this constellation of issues was subsequently neglected by most mainstream 20th-century urbanists, who opted instead for some combination of transhistorical, technocratic or instrumentalist approaches and tended to interpret cities as the spatial expressions of purportedly universal principles of human ecology or civilizational order (for a partial exception see Mumford’s revealing account of ‘coketown’ [1961, pp. 446–481]).

2 2 While Castells (1977 [1972]) limited his definition of social movements to those that succeeded in producing systemic change, we embrace a broader conceptualization. The issue of success or failure is contested, particularly on a systemic level, and it may vary according to whether it is assessed under, for example, genuinely emancipatory criteria or those of mainstream power politics. Both are relevant.

3 3 If the election of Obama shows the power of the people to use the political process to achieve some change, it also underscores the intrinsic limitations of election-based, parliamentary-democratic strategies of social transformation. When the centers of economic power remain in the hands of multinational corporations and unaccountable financial institutions, elections may have only a limited impact on the actual operations of global capitalism.

References

Boddy, M. and Fudge, C. (eds) (1984) Local Socialism? Labour Councils and New Left Alternatives. London: Macmillan.

Brenner, N. and Theodore, N. (eds) (2003) Spaces of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Castells, M. (1977 [1972]) The Urban Question. A Marxist Approach. London: Edward Arnold.

Dear, M. and Scott, A.J. (eds) (1980) Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society. London: Methuen.

Douglass, M. and Friedmann, J. (eds) (1998) Cities for Citizens. New York: Wiley.

Economist Intelligence Unit (2009) ‘Governments under pressure: how sustained economic upheaval could put political regimes at risk’, 19 March, http://viewswire.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=VWArticle VW3&article_id=954360280&rf=0How sustained economic upheaval could put political regimes at risk.

Engels, F. (1987 [1845]) The Condition of the Working Class in England. Trans. V. Kiernan. New York: Penguin.

Freier, N. (2008) ‘Known unknowns: unconventional strategic shocks’, Defense Strategy Development. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute. army.mil/

Harvey, D. (1976) Social Justice and the City. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Harvey, D. (1989) The Urban Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Harvey, D. (2008) ‘The right to the city’, New Left Review 53, pp. 23–40.

Heynen, N., Kaika, M. and Swyngedouw, E. (eds) (2006) In the Nature of Cities. New York: Routledge.

Jacobs, J. (1962) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.

Katznelson, I. (1993) Marxism and the City. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lefebvre, H. (1996 [1968]) ‘The right to the city’, in H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities. Ed. and Trans. E. Kofman and E. Lebas, pp. 63–184. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Lefebvre, H. (2003 [1970]) The Urban Revolution. Trans. R. Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lefebvre, H. (2009 [1966]) ‘Theoretical problems of autogestion’, in H. Lefebvre, State, Space, World. Ed. N. Brenner and S. Elden, pp. 138–152. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Logan, J. and Molotch, H. (1987) Urban Fortunes. Berkeley: University of California Press.

MacIntosh, M. and Wainwright, H. (eds) (1987) A Taste of Power: The Politics of LocalEconomics. London: Verso.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013

184 CITY VOL. 13, NOS. 2–3

Mayer, M. (2003) ‘The onward sweep of social capital: causes and consequences for understanding cities, communities and urban movements’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(1), pp. 110–132.

Mumford, L. (1961) The City in History. New York: Harcourt.

Purcell, M. (2008) Recapturing Democracy. New York: Routledge.

Saunders, P. (1984) Social Theory and the Urban Question, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge.

Schwartz, N. (2009) ‘Rise in jobless poses threat to stability worldwide’, New York Times, 15 February.

Smith, N. (1996) The New Urban Frontier. New York: Routledge.

Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [H

arva

rd C

olle

ge] a

t 07:

14 1

2 A

pril

2013